Short and Ugly, Unite!

As a student, teacher and observer of academia for the last 35 years, I have noticed that the achievement required to earn a grade of “A” or “B” has declined. Once upon a time, a “C” grade once indicated average performance. Today, a C represents well-below average performance, while A’s and B’s grow on trees. But, the contagion escaped the confines of the ivy and brick and now infects every part of our culture.
Al Gore’s courage is celebrated for sermonizing to a wildly cheering MoveOn.org audience and telling them precisely what they want to hear. Bill Clinton stands before the anti-American World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland and condemns the United States for not doing enough to combat global warming, and is applauded for his bravery, even though he never mustered the nerve to submit the Kyoto Treaty to the Senate for ratification.
But it seems that westside liberals are the worst grade inflators of all as they are now applauding their own courage. "History is going to look kindly upon the legislators who had the courage to vote for this," said Rep. Dave Upthegrove. (I did not make that name up,) "It's a great day for equality, for fairness."
On Tuesday, Christine Gregoire’s signature made Washington the latest state in the union to enact so-called gay civil rights. The editorialists and commentators looked down upon it and saw that it was good. Lawyers certainly approve.
But, if Washington’s legislature really wanted to do something courageous and strike a real blow for fairness, they would pass an ugly rights law or a short person’s rights law. It’s a simple matter to document discrimination against us short, ugly types. It’s very easy to draw correlations between height and income. In men, it comes out to about $1000 per inch annually. And although more difficult to express mathematically, we all know that attractive people get all the breaks.
Meanwhile, we can just as easily document the absence of discrimination against homosexuals. Seattle, Spokane and Tacoma already had gay civil rights protection ordinances on the books and heard few complaints. Considering that there will always be a background noise emanating from the chronically indignant, one must conclude that there is essentially no discrimination based upon sexual orientation. The legislature may as well have passed a law that forbids elephants from trampling gardens.
According to the 2000 census, homosexuals earn much more money per capita than do heterosexuals. So where is the discrimination that homosexuals need protection from?
What the heroes of Olympia have done is pass a law that protects a wealthy bunch of people from discrimination for which there is little documentable evidence.
So why did they do it? Well according to Jamie Pettersen, a lawyer for the gay rights group Lambda Legal, "I think the first and most important thing is that people around the state will feel safe. A lot of them have been really afraid."
So, this law was passed to help assuage fears that were inflamed for political gain in the first place.
And it must be pointed out that, unlike the hurdles faced by blacks, the short and the ugly, one’s sexual preferences are not immediately discernable. We have no difficulty identifying race, height and, although we may not be able to define ugly, we know it when we see it. Homosexuals look like everybody else.
On the other hand, there are mountains of evidence proving that the short and the ugly are discriminated against. Where is the political courage to protect them? Do the guarantors of equality need a well-financed political action committee to move them? Is the promise of a pat on the head from newspaper editorial page editors needed?
Maybe what we need is a politician with a name like “Representative Upthecreekwithoutapaddle” to champion our cause. We need movie producers to make cowboy movies about the short and ugly. We don’t need anymore violence committed against us. I know that while I was growing up my short friends and I got the tar kicked out of us by playground bullies every time the teachers weren’t looking.
We certainly need more real courage, and not the kind paraded around Olympia last week. While celebrating his own courage, Upthegrove didn’t even possess the courage to declare gay rights one of his own legislative priorities on his personal website.